Jukes, I., McCain, T., & Crockett, L. (2010). Education and the Role of the Educator in the Future. Phi Delta Kappan, 92(4), 15-21.
“We must recognize that the current education system has been set up to prepare students perfectly for a world that no longer exists.” Jukes, McCain, and Crockett call for nothing less than a paradigm shift to meet the dramatically different needs of learners in the 21st century. As digital natives, these students are not content to be passive receptacles of the brilliant lecture material of their teachers. They need experiential content which challenges their skills, meets their differentiated needs, and piques their curiosities to investigate and develop beyond their current capacities. The magnificent men and women who step forward to meet this challenge will have to do each of the following tasks:
- Customize learning for the learner
- Offer both virtual and physical learning experiences
- Present information in a nonlinear way
- Facilitate learning as a guide instead of classroom paperwork clerk
- Utilize thinking machines for adaptive learning options
- Present through multimedia
- Become a user and advocate of technology working toward 1:1 integration
- Offer students collaborative challenges to develop skills for real work environments
- Model the role of lifelong learner
- Concentrate on higher-level thinking skills, such as recognizing patterns, making inferences, drawing conclusions
- Create an environment for educational discovery
- Become a crafter of problems to engage students in problem-solving tasks
- Evaluate holistically
The authors present an exceptional analogy for educators to consider. When young learners are ready to get a driver’s license, the first step is to take a test, which allows them to get a permit to be in a learning situation with a professional instructor. When that stage has been fulfilled, the driver completes a live demonstration for an evaluator before being cleared for the driver’s license. The test is only the initializing stage, prior to the experiential learning and the demonstration of mastery. If this is true for the complex and multi-faceted task of driving a car, why isn’t the same philosophy applied to mathematical reasoning or language learning?
The article concludes with a mandate to get educators the substantive professional development they need, which is more than an afternoon here and there, but a program to provide learning to empower them for the shift to the dynamic and engaging role which is demanded to meet the needs of 21st century digital natives in the classroom. What most educators learned in education classes in college bears no resemblance to the tasks ahead of them for educating modern students in blended classrooms for the future ahead. Therefore, they need effective, coordinated, massive, ongoing training, using the methods they will be expected to deliver in their classrooms.
From a personal perspective, I attended a conference with Ian Jukes presenting the keynote address several years ago and was fortunately to attend a followup workshop with him. My attention did not wander for a second because his information commanded a mental shift which made perfect sense. I have never forgotten it and have recommended it to dozens of people. The bits and pieces of presentations which are posted on YouTube don’t do him enough justice. I have also had the opportunity to read several books by Lee Crockett. These men have a vision of the education pathway to the future which is “spot on” and should reside in the wheelhouse of every educator.
Teacher Takeaways
The future of education depends upon migration from the delivery model to an adaptive, collaborative, multimedia, higher-order thinking, discovery experience in class, led by an educator who serves as a facilitator, lifelong-learner, guide, coach, and crafter of problems to engage learners in new challenges.
EmpowerED 